I’m betting that 90% of all vending machines in the US will NOT take a dollar-sized coin.
I think you would lose.
I count money for a school district (lunch money) and get 20 or 30 sackies and susies every day, sometimes more.
They fit in every vending machine I have ever used.
So Cal …maybe we’re just ahead of the rest of the world.
And, to the first part of your question:
http://googolplex.cuna.org/12433/ajsmall/story.html?doc_id=131
there are approximately 8 billion one dollar notes in circulation.
My coin guide(“Redbook”) indicates perhaps 2 billion dollar coins(Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea] coins minted and theoretically in circulation.
Of course, they aren’t in circulation. They just sit in banks and the Federal Reserve, waiting for someone to request them. But, the request seldom comes.
They are rather available in change in very large urban areas. If you go to the average city in the US with a population of 250,000 or less, I’ll wager they are scarce in change.
Major urban centers such as NY and Chicago use them quite a bit in transit situations.
I’ll go visit a variety of vending machines here in Akron, Ohio(population ca. 225,000) and report back.
What city? Don’t answer if it is personal.
I think it may also have to do with pockets and wallets. Many guys don’t want to carry around coins, because they don’t fit in the billfold comfortably. You get a lot of them and you have this jingling, fat mess. Nor do we particularly want change pouches. Indeed, killing off dollar bills will merely make me move even more to electronic transactions.
As does the San Francisco Bay Area. Purchase one-way Caltrain ticket. Use $20 bill. Receive ~15 Sackies in change. Save them to pay sports bets to brother in Vermont. 
i love getting sackies and susies out of the stamp machine… it is a mini jackpot!
in philly most machines will take them and they work on the bus for fares.
the buffalo nickel is very cool. i think they should change all the faces on the coins to match tom’s on this quarter. he looks very good.
They did and they do. I’ve used sackies in all sorts of vending machines, from soda to candy to stamps to laundry detergent. Most of those machines predate the introduction of the sackie, and would assuredly accept a suzie as well.
You live in Queens. Come on out to the midWest and we’ll go vending-machine -hopping.
I live in SoCal, and while I don’t patronize vending machines much, I find that it’s less than even odds to find a machine that accepts them. Since I’ve done consulting (mechanical design) work for the vending industry I tend to look at the details of individual machines, and I’ve noticed that, more often than not, drink vending machines, espeically those that dole out the 20oz bottles of fizzy pop tend to take the dollar coins. (Sackies and SBA dollars are interchangable in size and weight, BTW.) Dry snacks machines, on the other hand (which are dominated by Crane National Vendors…you can tell, they’ve the guys with alphanumeric keypads instead of just numbers) very rarely, if ever, take them.
Interestingly, or perhaps annoyingly, the Metrolink and Metrorail ticket machines in Los Angeles give dollar coins (both Sackies and SBAs) in change, but often won’t take them. If I felt it was worth promulegating a conspiracy theory I’d suggest that the MTA is trying to force distribution of the coins (no doubt being paid off by Alan Greenspan who is in turn, controlled by the Trilaterial Commission and the Bilderbergs, who everybody knows are run by the Bavarian Illuminati) but the bleak and soggy reality is that the coin exchangers in those machines probably just aren’t designed and maintained too well.
I’m personally pretty indifferent about them except that throwing down a fiver and a quarter-size coin for a beer on the counter of a dark and crowded bar generally gets a querulous look from the bartender, at least until they can check out the coil in detail. I wish they would have put a hole in it, or made it triangle shaped, or somesuch, but instead it just looks like a slightly oversized two-bit piece.
Stranger
Your problem is that you live in Pasadena, where you can’t get a beer for $2.00-3.50 in a bar.
Again, come on out to the low-cost-of-living-no-sackies-allowed Midwest. 
I worked at a bowling alley several years ago and the cheapo snack vending maching that they had could take dollar coins. There was a DIP switch on the coin validator that turned dollar coins on or off. It was turned on but I never once saw a dollar coin in the bucket. They only went into the bucket as there was no change tube for the dollar coins and the machine didn’t take anything larger than $1.
I’ll have to check the Coke machine at my office and see if it can handle $1 coins.
I thought keeping pennies arround just made cents.
On the 90% machines not taking Sackies… Ive seen a few around Atlanta that even advertise that they do indeed take the Sackies.
Then again, I think I had a sackie once, but I’m 22. A dollar is spent, regardless of the form.
Then you can’t be used to them. They’re the same size as a Canadian dollar coin, and our quarters are the same size too, and I cannot imagine how you can’t tell them apart. They’re very different in size, almost as different as a quarter and a nickel.
Kill the PENNY!!!
as for the nickles, the reason you dont see to many of them is because nickles are the least circulated coins, you will never recieve more than one in change (unless the cashier is out of dimes) and customers can pay with as many as they like…its strange how a cash register will pay out coins all day of every type but on some days you will GAIN nickles.
Does Chicagoland count as midWest? I’ve used them in vending machines around here quite a bit. The machines with $5 bill readers even return them as change. Of course I haven’t travelled the land collecting data-points; there are only so many Hot Fries a man can eat.
I don’t know how much more Midwest you can get. Of course, that’s the urban midwest, not the rural western Kansas variety of Midwest.
When I visit a country that has largish-denomination coins (Canada, UK, etc.) I find that I actually have fewer coins in my pocket at the end of the day than I do in the US. I figure that, in the US, I don’t bother trying to count out exact change if I’m reaching in one pocket for my wallet (for $1 bills) and would need to fish around in another pocket for change. If, on the other hand, I have $1 and $2 coins in my pocket (or pounds, or whatever), I’ll likely count out exact change, since I need to use coins anyway.
I don’t think I explained that well, but hopefully you catch my drift.
I find that the color difference in the Canadian dollar is much greater than the Sacajawea dollar. The Canadian dollar is more copper looking. A clean new Sacajawea has a subtle gold look to it.
I’ve never seen a heavily circulated or tarnished one, so I’m not sure what would happen to them with heavy usage (such as the pennies turning dark brown with age and handling).